Solid state lighting technologies, i.e. illumination based on semiconductor light sources, such as light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and laser diodes, offer a viable alternative to traditional fluorescent, HID, and incandescent lamps. Functional advantages and benefits of LEDs include high energy conversion and optical efficiency, durability, lower operating costs, and many others. Recent advances in LED technology have provided efficient and robust full-spectrum lighting sources that enable a variety of lighting effects in many applications. Some of the fixtures embodying these sources feature a lighting module, including one or more LEDs capable of producing different colors, e.g. red, green, and blue, as well as a processor for independently controlling the output of the LEDs in order to generate a variety of colors and color-changing lighting effects.
In general, light sources including—semiconductor light sources such as LEDs generate heat. There is a persisting need to provide cooling for such light sources, and for various other devices such as other electronics, computers, etc. For this purpose, it is known to provide passive cooling by heat spreaders and/or heat sinks and active cooling by means of fans. However, fans are rather large and heavy, may produce noise, have poor cooling efficiency and have reliability issues. It is also known to provide thermoelectric cooling devices which employ the Peltier effect, or employ synthetic jets or piezoblades, for active cooling. However, with present technology it is not possible to provide a thermoelectric cooling device which can simultaneously have low cost and high power efficiency.
Thus, there is a need in the art for active cooling devices and methods which can overcome one or more of the limitations of current active cooling technologies.